Friday, 30 November 2012

Kembara ACM ICPC di Hatnyai II

First TimeThis journey is absolutely different.Instead of directly departed to Thailand, we landed at Alor Setar Airport. Must be reason for not staying at Hatnyai,as that there must be several considerations that had been made as the lecturers decided us to stay at Changlun.For what the reasons, this journey gives me opportunity to land at Alor Setar airport. This is the first time for that. The flight from LCCT to this airport is really short. Even to finish up all the dishes given in the flight I do not have much time for that. Also feels as if the flight just 30 minutes in the sky.Staying at ChanglunThe hotel we stayed there named T hotel, which buildings is orange in colour and just few minutes to Pekan Changlun by walking.As our destination is Hatyai, we have to get up early in the morning and departed there as early as possible. Well, this is really wasting as we do not have time to have breakfast at the hotel, which we already paid for staying there. And two morning breakfasts we had missed. What-so-a-waste!So actually, this is the consequences of staying far away from the actual place. Need to wake up early, spending much time in the van, missing the breakfast prepared by the hotels and others.ImmigrationThe first day to Hatyai was actually a quite problematic day for us as we still don't know what will happen. No picture at all on our journey.We thought that we all ready early for the first day. But the fact is the opposite. Arriving at the Bukit Kayu Hitam at 8.00 a.m. is a bit late actually. Hundreds of people already there queuing to pass this Malaysia-Thai border.As we did not know anything, we realized that we only had passport in our hand without the immigration form. Without help from any tourist guide, we had a problem of having the form. Thus, we just get it from a woman sitting there under an "umbrella" whose helping people without immigration form by filling it up instead of we ourself doing it. It is quite shocking as she asks RM10 per person for that simple task. And finally she got RM100 from 10 of us. Very easy right?But in the second day, we already noted where to get that immigration form, hence we saved up RM100 this time for filling that form by ourself.For the first day also, as we had to queue that long, we spend another one hour there just to pass that immigration. Arriving at 8.00 a.m, passing the immigration also at 8.00 am, but at local time (Thailand).